Members of the Palace Band have been incredibly generous so I took the harp along to this morning's rehearsal. Just before the tea break I treated them to a performance of The Ball, Rondo and Azaleas. They listened attentively and applauded heartily. They then asked lots of questions about the strings, tuning, ease of learning the technique, will I continue, how much does one cost, where are the pedals, and so on. One member even commented on the impressive dynamic range and wondered how I could do this after such a short amount of time learning. I leapt upon this and said that dynamics were not that difficult but it just required a bit of thought. Hint hint to the band! They all appeared to be very interested and I gained another two sponsors. I left the harp out and a few of them had a closer look while a couple of daring members had a pluck.
Afterwards I headed to another rehearsal in Cambridge with the County Youth Wind Orchestra (CYWO) who have a concert tomorrow evening. While the average age is somewhat lower than the Palace Band's, the rehearsals are very similar and a mixture of hard work, enjoyment of the music and a sense of fun are apparent. Players from both groups need to be constantly reminded of the dynamics and to watch the conductor, especially in the last bar!
My practice this evening was for Margaret, clarinettist with the Palace Band. Margaret started learning in a large class some years ago and joined the Palace Band around the same time that I did. She has recently bought herself a bass clarinet to further her musical interests. I can't let a tribute to Margaret go by without mentioning her faithful companions - husband David and Ziggy the dog! David and Ziggy often attend end of course concerts and we know from Ziggy's tail wag that his favourite composer is Bach! Margaret's session was for 40 minutes (during Top Gear again) and after a quick breeze through the exam pieces I spent some time on the orchestra pieces. I have been playing GOAT Music with the metronome but on the day I will have to watch Russell Keable, the conductor rather than listen to a beat. I switched the metronome onto silent and put it on the edge of the music stand so that I could see it out of the corner of my eye. The swish of the arrow back and forwards gave me a pulse and I tried to keep one eye on that, one eye on the music and one eye on the harp strings. It's not easy but at least I know what I'm aiming for - three eyes. I did some work on Merry-go-Round as I am going to include this in my repertoire for tomorrow's mini-performance alongside my established repertoire. More about that tomorrow and to give you a clue I finished with an attempt at Happy Birthday!
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